Komatsu Case Study

Komatsu

Komatsu UK

Komatsu, international manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, has more than 180 companies across the world and over 44,000 employees. Komatsu UK Ltd, based in Co Durham, employs over 350 people who are engaged in the design and manufacture of medium-sized hydraulic excavators mainly for the European market.

Komatsu went to market to evaluate workforce management solutions for its UK-based employees. At the time, it was managing time & attendance using an in-house database and paper timesheets. This system was cumbersome, labour-intensive and not fit for the number of employees and the number of shift patterns worked. The database could be prone to human error when recording attendance data and was difficult to retrieve information from. Komatsu also had a standalone swipe card system for access control, which was only used when the site was closed during holiday times and out of hours.

The main objectives of the project were the accurate recording of start/finish times, easy management of holidays, sicknesses and absences, securing access to the premises based on set profiles and managing a wide variety of shift patterns. Komatsu UK was aiming to automate the payroll process as much as possible and remove any chance of human error. All of these requirements needed to be backed up with a comprehensive reporting suite.

After evaluating five potential suppliers, we were chosen as our software was the easiest to use, most fit for purpose and offered the best value overall.

Solution overview

Intelligent Time:

Komatsu UK wanted a simple and easy-to-use solution for its manufacturing site in the North East. Administrated by key members of the Komatsu UK team, Intelligent Time is used to accurately capture arrival and departure times of its employees via one of 25 clocking terminals located on-site. Holidays, sicknesses and absences are recorded in the solution and managed via user-friendly calendar views. All information is visible in real-time, giving a live view of activity at any given time. By implementing Intelligent Time, Komatsu UK has been able to reduce its payroll process down from around 20 hours per month to just a couple of hours.

Intelligent Access:

With 25 doors and a very large site to secure, Komatsu UK was keen to install a solution that could provide unique access profiles for different employees/entry points and use the same card for both access control and time & attendance functions.

In addition to managing employees, all visitors/contractors are managed from within the solution, as are the tenants of a building that is located on the Komatsu UK site which is rented to a third party. In the event of a fire, the solution will release all doors so that everyone can evacuate as quickly as possible. There is future potential to expand the solution and include turnstiles.

Intelligent hardware:

Operating on a large site comes with its own challenges when deploying hardware. To make the day-to-day operation of the system as straightforward as possible, Komatsu required hardware that was reliable, resilient and easy to support. All of our hardware has a failure rate of just 0.5%, making a failure highly unlikely. In the event that there is a loss of power or network connectivity, the hardware will continue to function via on-board batteries and memory. By connecting via Ethernet, updates can be applied and distributed centrally, which has saved a significant amount of administration time since installation.

Intelligent Reporting:

One of the key project requirements was a comprehensive reporting capability. In addition to the 200+ standard reports in the solution, Komatsu had a requirement for us to produce a number of bespoke reports. These covered areas such as payroll information, holidays/sicknesses/absences, shift changes and many others. During the pre-installation phase of the project, each report was specified with one of our Project Managers before being created and delivered by our development team. Once created, the reports could then be run, scheduled and emailed like any other report in the system.